Last week, the Uniswap protocol crossed $3T in cumulative swap volume. Over the coming months, the Uniswap Foundation is committed to accelerating ecosystem growth with a focused roadmap that establishes foundational liquidity, and advances frontier infrastructure.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen Unichain cross $1B in value secured, and more than $8B in cumulative trading volume. Uniswap v4 is driving 20-30% of daily volume across Uniswap implementations. Hundreds of new projects have started building on Unichain, and more than 700 v4 hooks have been initialized across deployments. As exciting as these early signals are, they represent something deeper: a shift in how we think about what the Uniswap ecosystem is, and what it can become.

Today, we’re excited to share a more detailed look at our 2025 Uniswap v4 and Unichain growth roadmap. To establish the Uniswap Protocol as the world’s infrastructure for digital value transfer, we are laser focused on building network effects. As we kick off our efforts, we are scaling network supply – this means building up a depth of liquidity that serves our users and developers. We are driving growth on chains with the most activity and the largest builder communities today.

At the same time, we are deepening our support for developers. We’re focusing our efforts on v4 hooks with novel, high impact use cases. And to create lasting impact, we’ll leverage a phased approach: building foundational liquidity for v4 on Unichain, and then expanding programs to support new chains, and novel hooks, over time.  This phased approach shouldn’t imply a strictly sequential rollout; instead, a set of focus areas we can methodically work toward.

Phase 1: Establish foundational liquidity for v4 on Unichain

Timeline: Live

Goal: Kickstart liquidity to scale network supply, establishing a healthy baseline for TVL and activity

Overview: The first step towards catalyzing platform growth is already underway. In April, following the passage of the Uniswap Unleashed governance proposal, Gauntlet launched incentive campaigns for a targeted set of core, non-hooked v4 pools on Unichain. These initial campaigns are already showing strong results: growing liquidity, LP participation, and meaningful order flow, with $6.9B cumulative volume on incentivized pools.

This phase is focused on onboarding LPs, establishing a secure execution environment, ensuring maturity of necessary trading infrastructure and defining early liquidity composition around key assets with potential to scale across the Superchain. It also lays the groundwork for future phases: from hook adoption to cross-chain interoperability, by creating a healthy, diverse base of activity.

Phase 2: Expand v4 liquidity on Ethereum Mainnet

Timeline: May 2025

Goal: Demonstrate capital efficiency to drive v4 demand on Mainnet

Overview: Ethereum Mainnet accounts for a significant portion of Uniswap protocol TVL and daily volume. In this phase, we’ll focus on scaling v4 liquidity around core assets, including ETH, USDC, and USDT0, which serve as base pairs for the majority of swaps and execution flows across the ecosystem.

By concentrating incentives and LP onboarding on highly utilized pairs, we aim to showcase the capital efficiency advantages of v4’s singleton design, while laying the groundwork for future hook adoption, protocol integrations, and composable DeFi strategies.

This phase is about making v4 practical and performant on Mainnet for LPs, traders, and integrators; paving the way for broader v4 adoption with deeper liquidity.

Phase 3: Accelerate hook-native infrastructure on Unichain

Timeline: Q2 2025

Goal: Scale v4 teams with hands-on support

Overview: With foundational liquidity established, we’ll focus on providing expanded support for v4 teams.

Hooks represent more than features; introducing new use cases and new DeFi primitives. As we’ve worked with early builders, we’ve learned that teams need support at every stage of development. To address this gap, we’ll pilot a new grants program to provide structured, hands-on support; helping teams accelerate traction. We are working with direct projects based on:

• The strength of the team and their hook design

• The clarity of product vision and roadmap

• Early signs of traction or LP demand

• Alignment with the Uniswap Foundation’s broader ecosystem goals: potential to unlock novel defi primitives, capital efficiency or LP behavior on v4, and potential to create long-term infrastructure

In this phase, we’ll aim to build a class of battle-tested, modular, open source hooks that can serve as the infrastructure for future chain expansion. While we’re focused first on a small number of hook teams, our goal is to build a playbook that can benefit all teams.

More details will be shared in the coming weeks. To participate in the program, register interest here.

Phase 4: Expand the hook ecosystem across v4 deployments

Timeline: Q2-Q3 2025

Goal: Scale demand by expanding v4 hooks to new chains

Overview: Once pilot hooks are battle-tested on Unichain, they can be scaled to other chains, including Mainnet, Arbitrum, and Base. The Uniswap Foundation will select chains for expansion based on key criteria, including alignment with early hook use cases, liquidity depth and trading activity across core assets, developer traction, ecosystem maturity, and readiness to adopt Uniswap v4 as platform infrastructure, not just as a DEX.

These ecosystems each bring unique strengths: with diverse asset concentrations, user bases, and developer cultures. Pilot hooks enable customized, chain-aware infrastructure, adding value to each ecosystem from day one, and driving usage, volume, and protocol-aligned revenue.

With Superchain interoperability on the horizon, this phase sets the stage for unified liquidity and order flow across L2s, powered by shared hook infrastructure and core assets.

Supercharging the growth of every DeFi ecosystem

The best-case scenario is simple but ambitious. Uniswap v4 becomes the default liquidity layer across chains: not just a protocol, but a platform that can supercharge the growth of every chain’s native DeFi ecosystem.

Today, hooks allow for Uniswap v4 to be deployed to new networks with core, customizable DeFi infrastructure already included: MEV-aware routing, lending primitives, and more. Tomorrow, this platform can extend far beyond hooks; evolving into a DeFi ecosystem stack that includes integrated lending protocols, routers, aggregators, oracles, and other key services.

New chains can launch with a DeFi stack. Existing chains can unlock more powerful DeFi apps. And the Uniswap Protocol can capture more value and surface area, from day one of deployment.

We’re excited to write this next chapter alongside you. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to scale your v4 project, there are resources to help you every step of the way. Learn more.